In construction, particularly in the aircraft industry, it is often necessary to employ lightweight paneling for interior surfaces. This paneling is often somewhat hollow in structure, such as honeycomb in nature, to decrease the weight. Consequently, when it is desired to fasten something to a wall panel, it is often advisable to anchor a receptacle means or insert in the wall panel to receive the fastener member during the fastening operation.
Positioning and anchoring the inserts within the panel is often a time consuming and difficult operation. When considering a very large structure such as an airplane when many, many fasteners are employed, it can be readily seen that positioning of a large number of inserts within the panel walls can be a very time consuming and expensive labor operation during construction. For example, one method of positioning and anchoring the inserts within the panel is to first cut out a round hole in the rather fragile panel with a separate cutting member. The cutting member is then removed and the material which has been cut is plucked out with a pair of tweezers. Thereafter, a two-piece assembly is placed in the hole with adhesive and is held in position with the potting material until it bonds in position and is anchored. The entire operation is done by hand and each separate step must be done for each individual insert. Frequently this requires the time of ten minutes per insert which is clearly undesirable from a time standpoint.
It should also be kept in mind that the various configurations of inserts being employed in the art today do not facilitate the adhering of the insert within the hole in the panel. The prior art configurations and structures render the potting operation somewhat difficult thereby increasing the inefficient and costly time-consuming operations necessitated by the known insert structures.